BOISE — A statewide series of seven meetings seeking public comments on how Idaho K-12 public schools might be improved includes an April 23 date in Pocatello.

    The specific time-of-day and location for that “Pocatello Community Forum,” meeting and other meetings presented by the Task Force for Improving Education will be announced later, said task force chairman Richard Westerberg.

    The seven-meeting series slated for April 10-24 also includes meetings in Twin Falls (April 11), Idaho Falls (April 22), Caldwell (April 10), Coeur d’Alene (April 15), Lewiston (April 16), and Boise (April 24).    

“Put the dates on your calendar,” Westerberg said at the task force’s Friday meeting. “It’s coming to a town near you. Please attend.”

    Westerberg — a Preston resident and State Board of Education member — on Friday said that the public comments gathered statewide would be considered in the further development of education improvement recommendations at a meeting of the task force scheduled for May 3 in Boise.

    “And we’ll provide that public input to each one of the focus groups so that it’ll inform their decisions and their work going forward,” Westerberg said during an interview.

    He added: “I think we’ll get a whole bunch of input on a whole bunch of subjects. And, we’ll try to categorize that input and put it in a way that can then speak to some information — to inform — the recommendations that we ultimately come up with.”

    Westerberg said the three focus groups — “Fiscal Stability, Teacher and Administrator Effectiveness, and Education Structure” — of the task force moved ahead during the Friday session.

    “I think we made good progress in all of them,” Westerberg said. “But I think we specifically made a lot of progress in the area of teacher and administrator effectiveness.”